Coloring Rooms with Rules & Scheduling Project Info

So one limitation that I've encountered with Color Fill Schemes for Rooms has been that you don't really have flexibility in terms of a set of "rules" by which to color, its mostly an all or nothing proposition with regards to a single parameter's value. So this week, it finally occurred to me to try filters to color rooms. I tried several view setting with no luck. In my case I wanted to color some very specific rooms all the same, and while I could have used room name, and made each unique room the same color, and turned all the others off, that seemed like alot of work to me. There had to be a way to make filters work!

It finally occurred to me to apply the filter with a color scheme applied to the view. Viola! My filter changed the color of my target room(s). That still left me with the issue of how to only color the rooms targeted with the filter. This actually turned out to be quite simple, rather then turn the rooms off, I made them "white". The white is a good "trick", it means that I can reduce my color scheme to a parameter with fewer values, think Department Names rather than Room Names, you could even create a parameter for rooms to which you assign the same value. With all rooms still visible, but set to white, now I have the freedom to colors rooms based on whatever Filter Rules I can dream up, thus allowing me to effectively right conditional statements to group rooms together under the same color or pattern which a single value would not typically allow.

Another silly little thing I encountered this week. I needed a schedule to contain project information, in this case with a list of areas. I actually needed the Project Name with each row of data (don't ask too many questions). What is one to do? I remembered that a couple of weeks ago when working with schedules that "Project Information" was a valid choice in the schedule field's tab combo box. This time though, I created a new schedule and it wasn't there! Then it occurred to me to check the "include linked files" box. Once again, presto! I had project information available to schedule with my areas. Now ironically I don't actually need to schedule anything from my linked file(s), but that is ok, I can deal with that one way or another. I do somewhat understand why these choices only become available when choosing to include linked file data, but at the same time it is a bit of a needless limitation, I can't think of any good reason why Project Information should not always be a valid choice.

Type Catalog Quirkieness

So, was working on Type Catalogs today and came across an interesting quirk. If you're creating a type catalog that is going to populate built-in parameters you have to make sure that while creating the family you've put a value into that parameter at some point (even if you want to leave it blank in the end). It would seem that the blank parameters carry some type of null value by default. For instance my Type Catalog was supposed to populate the "Description" parameter, however I never bothered plugging any data in, as I knew I was just going to build a Type Catalog. However, when I went to load the family the family loaded properly, but I got a warning that the Description parameter did not exist! Obviously as a built-in parameter it is/was there. When I went back to the family, I added a value to the Description parameter, saved, deleted the value, and magically the Type Catalog worked correctly. The interesting thing to note here is that once a value is added it can be deleted, but its no longer a <null> value, so it will carry through the load process when using a Type Catalog.

As another update, house construction is progressing, interior fitout is coming along, cabinets are installed and painting is just getting started.

Art & Science

Vermont House elevation study

It is always interesting to see what pops up on my Google News feed that simply searches "Revit". Most of the time it is various press releases from companies announcing new add-ins or services (not terribly exciting), but occasionally something of real note pops up.

So this morning as I ate my muffin before going to chucch and browsed my tablet I found myself reading an OpEd piece by Michael Graves in the NYTimes. Now Michael (Mr. Graves, I dunno...?)  is not my favorite architect by any stretch of the imagination, but he is certainly not awful in my opinion. When I was in Philly our office had the opportunity to work with his firm on a local project and we chased some work together (I even spent an afternoon in their office working on sketch-up with some of their folks). It was a good relationship and we (firms) worked well together.

So to the point, I generally agree with him in his piece. I particularly like how he separates "Architectural" drawing into three distinct categories. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a good drawer at all, I enjoy sketching, and I love to use it to get my ideas out, but usually I'm the only one who understands my sketches (maybe I should have focused more on hand "art" while in school).

I would however put forward that even the lines of the first two categories (referential sketch and preparatory study) are being blurred by technology. With the advent of tablets, and programs like Evernote, Sketchbook, the new "collaboration" between Moleskin & Evernote and the fact that styli are actually helpful even with a tablet (sorry Steve) it seems to me that more and more people will start to use these electronic tools to do sketching, and in fact they can even support the workflow that Michael describes in his piece. Of course these technologies do not replicate the "feel" of using a hand sharpened lead against yellow trace, but the question I pose is; what is more important? The end product, the result, or the means by which we get there? I understand and support the need to sketch, and I don't expect that we'll ever be "sketching" in a program like Revit, but I do believe that technology can make it easier and faster to collaborate, even when we are sketching and drawing (and still get an artistic end result that we can say is "Art"). Furthermore, at the end of the day, I will still always keep a roll of trace handy at my desk, because sometimes (at least today and likely the near future) it is in fact just "easier".

However, as an example, of where "electronic" is taking over for physical last year when I was the project architect and I had to send "sketches" to our structural engineer, what did I do? I didn't print something out, draw on it, scan it and e-mail it, nor did I just draw something from scratch. Instead I used "Snip" a utility that comes with Windows7 to capture a screen shot from Revit, and use the built in pen tools to mark-up up the screen shot then directly e-mail to the engineer. Now it did help that I had one of the old Wacom screens off to the side (3rd screen, 1024x768) to quickly do my mark-ups, but in the end that is a minor point.

I realize that these sketches do not fall into the two categories that are the focus of the OpEd, but I think the point of the application of the technology still stands, and one can see where the same underlying technological tools could be applied to the practice discussed. I'll also admit that the "study" shown at the top was probably not 100% hand drawn (I honestly don't remember at this point), there is a good chance that the sketch was based roughly on a computer drawing, but the act of "sketching", was way to explore and embellish what would otherwise be a very un-emotional and static drawing produced by a computer program.

The biggest difficulty I find is making the technology available, and part of our dialog. The workflows and processes exist at an individual level (like myself) but I've yet to effectively capture it in a way to teach it, or make it available to others. The limitations of the availability of tablets (and other technology) fully integrated with enterprise systems also raises barriers to teams adopting artistic digital workflows (for instance I can't put a Wacom on everyone's desks, even old ones). I hope that the day will come, but I'm not sure when and I'm also not sure "how much", how much do people need the physical feel of drawing to execute drawing, versus the graphical result, without the "touch"?

What are your thoughts?

House Updates

A few delays here and there, but finally drywall (blueboard) has started to go up. The crew is moving quickly, they should be done by early next week at the latest. More pics on Google+.

RTC NA wrap up, final thoughts

Home again, and back at the office... :-(

RTC NA was great (again) and the organizers deserve plenty of credit for putting on a great show! James does a great overview post on his blog (with some fantastic inside quotes).

In case you have not heard, next year's will be in Vancouver Canada (hence the NA and not USA). As well as the first European conference in Delft Holland and AUS is going to New Zealand!

Now some may be thinking (because I already heard mutterings) that Canada might be prohibitive for Americans because air flights into Canada have a habit of "jumping" in cost compared to a similar domestic flight in the lower 48. Might I suggest you consider flying into Seattle and renting a car (3 hr drive). If you bring your family it will be a great vacation, or if you pair up with some fellow Revit junkies from your area you can split the cost on the car.

The locations chosen for RTC tend to be very family friendly, and its nice to see everyone in such a relaxed and intimate atmosphere. The upper northwest is a beautiful part of North America if you've never visited, and given the time frame (mid July) it should be a great time to visit and make a vacation of it! I know we had a great time going to Atlanta early, hanging out then having some great Revit and BIM conversations and seeing some excellent presentations!

Our own lab went really, really well. As a bit of a teaser for the material you missed out on, this is a short supplementary video I put together for the lab. Start planning now! If I had to choose between AU and RTC, and I considered myself an expert user, looking to learn from the top of class experts, I would pick RTC!

Closing talk quote

"get rid of text. If you're using text you're doing it wrong"

On the boat

We're on the boat to dinner and our daughter has joined us. Off to eat pig on a stick.

BIM washing

Interesting link

http://www.bimthinkspace.com/2011/06/episode-16-understanding-bim-wash.html

Data mining

How to mine data such as wall types and line style use data from models.

We're here!

Checked in and heading to the pool! If you're around look us up, drop an email, comment on the post or find Krista on Facebook.

Touchdown

We have arrived. If you can't tell the sign says welcome to Atlanta.

On our way to RTC

We are on our way! Elephante too!

Vaporware!

So, I feel like I need to say something on the topic of "Autodesk 360". You may have seen recently that there has been another new "360" announcement. The problem I have with 360 is there is no product! It is a best a banner for a number of different products, most of which rely on Autodesk's cloud that they've built out (courtesy of Amazon web-services). If you start to dig into the details, it is all still separate "things". Recent acquisitions Horizontal Glue and Vela Systems for instance are all still sold through their primary channels and have not been anywhere near integrated into Autodesk. "Single Sign On" is more like "Single User ID, sign in multiple times",. If you're a subscriber with access to some of the other cloud services like Rendering, Structural Analysis, CEA, etc. there is no "single" sign on. When you get "into" the "360" website, you still have to log into each unique product.

The issue I have, is people are starting to talk about 360 like it is a product. Even Autodesk's marking material suggests the presence of some "master" 360 product "Autodesk BIM 360: The next generation BIM". If I didn't know better this would lead me to believe I can buy "360", which is about far from the truth as you can get. If 360 were some sort of "master" or "base" program to which I could add modules, then the marketing speak would make sense (and maybe that is Autodesk's long term goal), but here, today its just Vaporware.

My warning to you, if you see someone listing how they've "got" 360, or they ask you to compare 360 to another product, then start asking questions. My response is "there's nothing hear folks, time to move on". If you peak behind the curtains, you're not going to find something you can actually put your hands on. None of this is to dispute that Autodesk does not offer cloud services, my point of contention is that I think the marketing approach to said services is confusing at best and mis-leading at worst.

Hope to see many of you at RTC USA next week!

RTC North America 2012! Oh & Revit 2013

So the veil has lifted for yet another year on the latest release of Revit. I know that David Light will provide a detailed overview of the new features so I'll spare you re-writing my own post. That said I'm very excited by the changes to View Templates and View Types, I view this as critical to help maintain a graphically consistent document set in your model, particularly when working on large projects with big teams. The other big piece that I think many architecture users will get excited about will be the new stair tool (the old one is still there) and some minor improvements in railings. Would we like more, perhaps, but at least we've got something, rather than nothing.

So, the other thing I've been tardy on letting people know about is that Krista, David and myself are all schedule to be speaking at RTC '12 about Stairs and Rails! Of course up until now my class brief on the RTC website had to be intentionally vague, but now I can let everyone know that the course will not be discussing the old stairs and railing tools, but will focus on the enhancements provided by 2013.

So if you have not already, seriously consider signing up for RTC, if last year's is any indication, this year should be fantastic, particularly with a larger audience!

Where have we been?... Busy!!!!

A concerned reader wrote a comment, asking where we went? What hole absorbed us, was everything ok?

The icons all represent something that has been keeping me quite occupied since mid November!

• Since October 24th, I've been at home for a complete week three times. Other than that I've been on the road for business or the various holidays since then (or AU), and will be on the road this week and next. I finally get a break in Feburary while my babysitting heads west for a month of skiing (grandparents!).
• Work is busy for me (keeping me on my toes), lots of things on my plate, and we need good (brilliant) people! Also, I will be speaking at an upcoming online event: BIM Spectrum

• Did you know we have a one year old now! She talks, and talks and walks..... Stairs hold no fear for her!
• We're doing this silly thing called building a house (and managing the construction)! I've posted pics on G+, I'm a bit behind, windows are all installed, rough stairs are done on the inside, and I've been told (as I write from a location somewhere in N. America) that first floor interior partitions were mostly completed today!

House Panels

Our Revit model is soon to be created in reality. The panels have arrived at the fabricator.

Platforms vs. Products

Depending on the tech circles you run in (or keep track of) you may have heard of (or even read) the following post that was made by a Googler who formerly worked at Amazon.

        Stevey's Google Platforms Rant

Who knows if it is/had/or will have any impact within Google, but it is still a great, well thought out post/article/tirade about how to "design" something and quite honestly in my opinion the underlying tenets can be applied to the design or architecture of anything, not just software. If you're designing a building, do you want to design a "Product" or do you want to design something that people will be able to "plug into", make use of, and adapt to their needs? Sorry FLW fans, but in some respects he was a bit of unique genius like Steve Jobs, and most of us are just not that good, we can't design something that will perfectly fit the end user's needs 5, 10, 20, 50 years down the road, the best we can do is design something that will adapt well to meet those needs as they come about.

So besides a commentary on design over-all, why do I bring this up? If like me you're passionate about where Revit can go, and how it can help change the industry, or if you're just really frustrated with its current limitations and what it can't do right now, then I think it is important to look back at Revit's development history overall. Originally Revit was undoubtedly designed as a product. The stories from out of the Factory back that assertion up with no ifs, ands or butts; "tell me what they (user) needs it to do, and I'll (we'll) make a tool". That is very much a product mentality and quite honestly it is what is needed to capture people's imagination and more importantly market share, you need to be selling a product. However as the article makes note of, Facebook somehow someway did a great job of starting life as a product, and then became a platform.

And that, really is the key for Revit, and where we are today. Revit is quite clearly (and has been for the last four to five years) on a path to truly becoming a platform. The unfortunate reality though is that its taken a great deal of upfront investment that you can't see, to make that transition, particularly for a product that did not start its life with the idea to be a platform (the article also clearly talks about how this transition is not easy). The other part is that Revit isn't done yet, if you talk to anyone who knows anything about the API, they'll tell you there are numerous parts and pieces that they don't have access to yet, every year the API grows stronger, but only as feature teams tackle parts of the feature set that need updating, add news ones, or where adding API hooks are easy to add. Furthermore, developers have in the words of the posting started to "eat their own dogfood" in terms of developing against the API, and not creating custom hacks, and data transfers to make things work.

So why should you care (if you don't know already)? First off as Revit continues to evolve into a platform more and more you will see an ecosystem of Autodesk offered services (Autodesk Cloud) and tools as well as third party software tools and services that really start to get at "doing something" with these great models we've got (see my post "Quack!" for where I think the next big development bridge is). Up until recently most API tools were confined to aiding and assisting direct modeling efforts, however more and more there are tools showing up that are all about doing something more with the model data, whether it is Project Storm or Neon (structural analysis or rendering) or Newforma's plug-in (still needs some work) or some yet to be announced tools that I know are coming from developers (exciting stuff coming) or even experiments like Vasari, it is clear to see where things are headed, and none of it would be possible if Revit does not act and breath like a platform and not a product.

So for the Autodesk'ers out there that I know like to browse my blog, pay attention! I think you're already on this track, but this is only further re-enforcement of the direction that you need to head in; and for the users out there, have patience, the more that Revit acts like a platform, the easier (in the long run) it will be for Autodesk to add the new features you want, or have someone else add a feature for you, or potentially have both and you can choose.

A Tale of Two Normals

As anyone who has used Revit to model geometry knows it does not really seem to care about "normals", which if you're familiar with most other 3D modeling software you know exactly what Normals are, even in Sketch-Up! But lets be realistic here, any 3D modeling software has to have surface normals, and occasionally even Revit can be bent to your will....

So, here's the scenario, lets say you have a solid box. If you create a spherical void that cuts the solid, you would expect the result in the second image based on how Revit "typically" works.

But what if what you were looking for was slighting different, what if you wanted the part of the solid that is being subtracted? Normally in the Revit "world" you would say you need to create a void that is on the "outside" rather then just a spehere, to get the result in the third image.

What is I told you that you can create the condition with the same spherical void! You might say, what! How! Well, its seems that normals sometimes do matter in Revit.

To achieve the result in the third image its is all about how you draw the arc that creates the sphere. In the first example the arc is drawn counter-clockwise from the "top" of the axis to the "bottom" of the axis. To get the result in the third image the arc must be drawn clockwise from "bottom" to the "top" of the axis. In this case the differing result is because the normal(s) of the surface that make the void are different based on the direction of the arc, which is controlled by how you draw it.

An interesting little "feature" in Revit/Vasari (to be honest I did this in Vasari), your mileage may vary on what you get depending on what you're doing, but it could be handy and it shows that it pays to pay attention to what direction you draw your lines, even in Revit!

AU 2011

Registration is live, if you missed it earlier, I posted about the classes I'm teaching here.

The first session of the lab filled up quick (AU was in touch with Zach and I two days after early registration opened!). In any case they asked if we would do another session and I'm happy to say that Zach and both agreed to. Everyone really needs to thank Zach's wife as she had to give the final ok. Keep your eyes peeled for the second session for Thursday 1:00pm.

For more info on the lab, Zach has the whole break down on his blog.

It Only Takes a Spark....

It only takes a spark to light a fire (at least that is how the song goes that I learned...). Already the blog-o-sphere  & twitter (so I hear) have lit up with news about Spark. As Steve called it a "Revit Lite" as it were. What I do like about Spark is that while it is a great intro to Revit, it seems to me that once anyone is feeling comfortable with Spark, there is a good chance you'll be wanting to into full blown Revit in order to take advantage of some of the missing features. Speaking of which, here is the run down on what you should not expect to find in Spark:

Missing Revit features in Spark

Obviously Vasari fills some of the gaps missing from Spark, but there is also no clear or defined workflow between the two. Secondly, don't expect to be opening your Rvt file from Revit in Spark, it will be automatically converted to a link for you. This means that you can still at least link in a structure model or MEP model if you happen to be a small arch shop dipping your toes into Revit. There are a couple of missing items that I was a bit surprised by perhaps the most important "trusses". However, fear not you can still create line based families (which can be assigned to structural framing) so go ahead, make your own parametric pre-fab truss, it will probably look better than what Revit creates, and you'll learn how to build parametric families.

Look for a follow-on post in a few weeks where I plan to tie up a number of these lab items into hopefully an interesting (and perhaps compelling) workflow.

Cheers,
-R